Monday, June 23, 2008

A Very Small Altered Board Book







This is one of those two and three quarter inch kids chunky board books. They don't take a lot of time and are really fun to do. This one I glued dictionary pages on every page. Then I lightly gessoed over them making some areas heavier than others. I then inked the pages. I selected this handmade paper with brass dots over it in a leafy swirl pattern. This was the third element to bind the book pages together. Randomly tearing this paper and gluing it down gave me a background for the main images.

I selected butterflies and flapper women as my main images. I used a variety of stamps and embellishments. Even an old butterfly pin from my childhood. The window is for a doll house that a friend had given me when I was going through a heavy window thing. The niche is two pages glued together after the hole was cut and finished. I filled the niche with my image, a key and some sparkling gold beads to roll around. Then covered the niche with mica and secured with eyelets. Then, I glued the two pages together forming the completed niche.

This is a quick and easy altered book. I think this would be a fun book to do with a child. Maybe a rainy day project for the summer. It would make a nice animal or dinosaur book. How about fairies, mermaids or the ocean. You could use a lot of scraps from your work table to complete.

8 comments:

Gayle Page-Robak said...

You are inspiring me, Elizabeth...I bought a couple of board books and forgot about them...now, guess what I have to do! Love what YOU have done! Beautiful.

Christy said...

this little book is just perfect. i love butterflies and love the way you used the paper, the gesso and the ink to give the entire book unity! blogger is having issues tonight so this is my second try at leaving a comment.

Ellen Etc said...

So lovely! I'm a novice working on an altered book to enter in the county fair and needed inspiration. (The main inspiration is "Go!") I couldn't find an email address associated with your blog to tell you individually how much you're inspiring me to get off my duff, away from the monitor, and back out to the garage to make a mess. OK, then ... bye! ... (Ellen)

Katrina said...

Just stunning, I love this little book

simple~needs said...

i love the book!! am so wanting to try one!!

Marva Plummer-Bruno said...

Oh I love these!!! Beautiful! Marva

carole brungar said...

Gosh this is really lovely! Where do you find such lovely images to use? Thank you for sharing! Carole

Cat Stegall said...

simply lovely!Very inspiring..cathee
www.catartnsoul.blogspot.com